There is a story in every document.

There is a story in every document.

The more I am involved in family research, the more I love it. My personal research aside , the stories uncovered never cease to amaze me. I mean the fact is , what lay dormant  in the archives , is someone’s fascination of the future. Here are three brief examples of just some story lines discovered in my research this week:

My recent assignments have taken me to the parish archives of a number villages in   Northern Britain, where original church documents make wonderful reading. Perhaps not at  the time , but today the phrase ‘ supposed to be begotten by  the Reverend Cornelius Abbotsford of this parish’  when written against a child’s baptism in 1707, only invites the feeling of intrigue. It also creates a whole new avenue of research, based on nothing more that blind theory, what if’s and maybe’s.  In truth , whilst this is interesting to research  and in the main out of the ordinary, the paternal line can only be proved by the DNA of living descendents. None the less, researching the ‘accused’ might prove to be an interesting distraction and in any case, as my old mother would say, it is a wise man that knows his own father !